A key aspect that kept the production in-state was the search for a hanamachi, a geisha district, in which most of the movie is set. Japan was ruled out because "there were not a series of streets or rivers or bridges that weren't touched by the modern world," according to director Rob Marshall, who wanted the same love for detail and accuracy to go into his production as was in Arthur Golden's best-selling novel. Thus, the production realized early that it would have to build the hanamachi as an old-fashioned set.

The Sony Pictures production scouted locales in British Columbia, Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia before Marshall impressed upon his collaborators the importance of shooting in California. Not only did he feel that the best craftspeople for the job were there, but he also needed "a place where I could, in one day, go from the costume shop to the production-design shop to meetings with my cinematographer to rehearse with the actors." In fact, "the requirements of the movie were more like a play," producer Doug Wick says.

The filmmakers ended up building a huge set on an Arabian horse farm in Westlake Village called Ventura Farms. There, over a period of five months last year, a 4-acre, gently sloping hillside was leveled flat with bulldozers and excavators. In its place, they built a village that consisted of 43 buildings, a 200-foot-long river and three bridges, all of which production designers would weather through all four seasons and age three decades.